"The Matter with California"

...Wallace's potential as a spoiler in 1968 will have to be developed in other states...

...The California Election Code almost prohibits newly formed parties from contesting legislative or Congressional seats...

...In the end, however, they turned out COMMENTS AND OPINIONS an approximate 59 per cent vote for Brown, slightly less than in 1962...

...These returns and their consequences in Sacramento bring to mind a pre-election prognosis of Ramparts: "if anything is certain in the miasmic politics of California, it is that no Reagan victory, however sweeping, will seriously diminish Democratic power in the legislature...

...In San Francisco's mayoral elections, Proposition P for "immediate withdrawal" netted 76,000 of the 210,000 votes cast...

...California's most liberal metropolitan county thereupon entered Reagan's camp, even though ten months earlier San Francisco had rejected Reagan by a 50,000 plurality...

...These undertakings met with resistance from liberal legislators, and state politics were plunged into fierce turmoil...

...Thus Brown, who in 1962 received 59 per cent support from these blue-collar workers (over 5 per cent more that his statewide percentage), got only 40 per cent of their votes in 1966 (2 per cent less than his statewide total...

...Eight years later, with this coalition fractured, a complete electoral reversal occurred proving that without a full coalitional at Miami, Wallace's influence upon Republicans will be minimal, while AIP inroads among Democrats will be comparatively more impressive...

...By comparison with the 1962 returns, the Republican gubernatorial support mounted 36.6 per cent while Pat Brown's fell 7.5 per cent...

...This state of affairs became known as "The Matter with Kansas," and was then attributed to the combined irascibility of the Populists and the intransigence of Republicans...

...Although he won several members of the Republican state central committee and received some large contributions, he found it extremely difficult at first to secure 66,059 registrants...

...With Reagan's accession to the governorship, four out of five Democratic state executives were swept from office, six new Republicans won state senatorial seats, seven Democratic assemblymen lost out, and three additional conservative Republicans were dispatched to Washington...

...The liberal CDC with its diminished influence and heightened factionalism is adamant against the national party leaders...

...Like Wallace, it urged those who wanted to participate in the primaries to sign up and then reregister Democratic before the April deadline...

...Electoral activity with its built-in testing of political viewpoints is only a temporary way station for those New Leftists who are traveling toward chemo-messianism through COMMENTS AND OPINIONS hallucinogens...

...Instead of working with COPE to defeat the white backlash and re-win bluecollar workers, many of these liberals will sit on their hands or go fishing this election year...

...The electorate (perhaps taking its cue from the Ramparts editorial staff) cast Keating away "like an old shoe...

...Organized labor was defied by his use of convict labor as farm workers...

...The MexicanAmerican , vote for Reagan fell off 7.8 per cent...

...Previously, Peace and Freedom embarked on two mixed electoral ventures...

...A statewide mustering of Reagan forces had effectively organized Marks's campaign—in the midst of last summer's riots—aimed at splitting the trade-union and Jewish vote and at defeating Assemblyman John Burton, erstwhile New Leftist and brother of Congressman Philip Burton...

...They have penetrated the coalition by breaking off and winning a major chunk of its labor vote without making a single concession to labor interests and thus maintaining conservative control in a unified party...

...At the same time, however, samples from Los Angeles and Alameda county precincts of bluecollar voters revealed a loss for Brown of 28.5 per cent and a gain for Reagan of 41 per cent...

...On the one hand, as a sample in a Los Angeles district indicates, they gave Brown fewer votes in 1966 than in 1962—a 15.8 per cent drop...

...That the white backlash succeeded in fragmenting California's electoral coalition of labor, liberals, Negroes, and other minorities is apparent in these voting patterns...

...Not since 1939 has so conservative an administration ruled the state...

...REAGAN AND THE CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICANS necessarily benefit from this state of affairs...

...Their overwhelming support for him in the gubernatorial elections of 1966 was consolidated last August when the Republican, Milton Marks, won a state senatorial byelection in San Francisco...

...A candidate in the primaries must be a registered member of his party for 90 days...

...Of the Watts electorate 88 per cent supported Brown in 1966, over 2 1/z per cent more than in 1962...

...Stable political organization, unlike chiliastic demonstrative action, requires unremitting and arduous devotion not evident in the life-style of many New Leftists...

...Despite the increased number of candidates, Keating stood out as the sole New Leftist and the only candidate with previous ballot exposure...

...During his first year of office Reagan affronted Negroes and Mexican-Americans with his antiwelfare and "crime in the streets" cam COMMENTS AND OPINIONS paigns...

...George Wallace entered California last fall expecting an easy recognition of his American Independent party by attracting conservative Republican registrants and their financial support...

...Little likelihood exists, of course, for an attack on Sacramento, although armed members of the Black Panther party stormed the Statehouse last May, preceded earlier by the largest protest march in the capital's history against the Governor's cuts in education and his tuition proposals...

...If, however, Nixon is the nominee, Wallace will win increased Republican support...

...In San Mateo's Congressional race, Edward Keating, encouraged by his 31,000 votes in the June 1966 primaries, returned for a second round...

...AS LONG AS THE COALITION remains dismembered, the other registered parties try to live off its entrails...

...Two years later, with a full range of racial issues in public focus, Reagan adopted and "improved" Murphy's approach...

...The backlash was manifested not as a drop in the blue-collar vote but as a wholesale switch—greater than the shift in the state as a whole...

...It will not be significant in immediate terms, and to rely on it to bear fruit by 1972 is to forget that most of its members will have passed 30 by then...

...Their hostility toward Negroes accounted for their indifference toward an administration that had favored civil rights...

...Reagan's "Creative Society" has confronted none of the state's problems...

...Their turnout for Brown, again in comparison with 1962, increased by 5 per cent, while their vote for the Republican gubernatorial candidate declined 16 per cent...

...In contrast to Reagan, Nixon is viewed by conservative Californians as both a moderate and a loser...

...In any event the AIP, although beamed toward a wide spectrum of discontents, will have no influence in the primaries and little effect on the outcome of the general election...

...All too many Californians viewed this performance in Sacramento as a political morality play with Reagan in the sympathetic role of Everyman...

...If Reagan receives his party's nomination New Left campus elements, ardent blackpower advocates, and liberal dissidents who want their demand for "immediate withdrawal" from Vietnam brought to the hustings...

...But with Reagan as the national hopeful of the conservatives, Wallace was thus put into direct and unfavorable competition with the governor's ambitions...

...IN THE 1890's KANsns—dominated by Re publicans since Civil War days—fell to the control of the Democrat-People's party...

...In addition, he must not have been a registered Republican or Democrat for a year...

...The Johnson slate will undoubtedly win by at least 2 to 1, although Reagan in the Republican Presidential primaries may outpoll Johnson...

...On the other hand, they could not embrace a backlash directed against them also...

...Political passions were fired so high that armed conflict in the capital was threatened...

...T T O DISMISS REAGANISM by glibly invoking California's reputation for zany politics is to misunderstand the conservative nature of the Republican strategy...

...California politics is now in a similar situation...

...No longer an instrument for party revival, it is seriously thinking of bolting when its peace slate loses in June...

...They fail to realize that "the matter with California" is the consequence of a fragmented coalition such as Reaganism seeks to extend to the country...

...This alone makes the future of Peace and Freedom questionable...

...In 1964 there was the open-housing referendum, in 1965 the riot in Watts, in 1966 the riot in San Francisco, the vandalism in Oakland, and the black-power mass meeting in Berkeley's Greek theatre...

...Yet the impact of this increased bloc vote was not significant because Negroes comprise only one-twentieth of California's voting population...

...Nevertheless, seven out of every ten of his former supporters abandoned him, and he ended up with 8,800 votes...

...He was compelled to secure additional funds from his Southern supporters and to enlist the services of Alabama state employees for an accelerated registration drive...

...George Murphy's senatorial defeat of Pierre Salinger on the coattails of Proposition 14 was the first forewarning of the electoral potency of racism...

...After a second and extended trip to California Wallace was able to gain the necessary signatures, in great part from transplanted white Southerners who are registered Democrats generally...

...The California Democratic party is in a protracted dismal state-divided over Vietnam, weakened by an inability to relate volunteer groups with elected officials, estranged from large sections of labor and academic liberals, and torn by rivalry between a Johnson and a McCarthy slate...

...Endorsed by disparate groups like Ramparts, the DuBois clubs, the Maoists and SDS forces, it plunged into a last-minute registration drive "to equal and surpass" the AIP...

...Ramparts still chooses to ignore the fact that California's profound political shift in 1966 followed on the heels of two years of racial agitation...

...This was less than the minimal 40 per cent that might have been expected for an expensive campaign costing a dollar per vote...

...All this remains obscure to California's democratic-left liberals who accept a system of friends and foes which defines organized labor as enemy...

...Any expectation that Johnson's primary victory will herald party amity is unfounded...

...In 1966 the electorate responded in terms of a white backlash, particularly virulent among blue-collar workers...

...Now that the California conservatives have come into their own, even Senator Kuchel sees no need to straddle a two-party electorate —as did Earl Warren in his gubernatorial days—and he is planting both his feet in Reagan's camp...

...This virtuallly excluded Wallace's AIP from the primaries and left him only with a Presidential slot in the November elections...

...Mexican-Americans, who constitute a greater proportion of the state than the Negroes but participate less in elections, were caught up in the cross-pressures created by the backlash...

...Originally put together in 1958 and invigorated by the "right to work" threat, the then triumphant coalition carried Brown to the governor's chair and won all but one statewide executive posts, a majority of the Congressional seats and, for the first time in over 60 years, a Democratic majortiy in both the State Senate and Assembly...

...An altogether different response emerged among Negro voters, as is illustrated by the 1966 vote in Watts...

...He also victimized the elderly and infirm by efforts to undercut Medi-Cal and mentalhygiene services...

...Instead, it has displayed undue deference toward the affluent and complacent, those who crave protection for personal privilege, police power to solve social problems, and immunity from rising demands for jobs, housing, and education...

...THE NEWLY QUALIFIED PEACE AND FREEDOM backing, the Democratic party of California party, more a mood than a party, attracts must fall into traditional impotence...

...His most harmful assault upon the poor was inflicted through regressive taxes...